Advertisement
Published: August 15th 2010
Edit Blog Post
So the plan was to stay in Berlin for a full day which I would have loved - there was so much more that I wanted to do there, but there was no night train to Prague and the hostel had no rooms available to us for another night so the options were to trawl the streets for somewhere to stay or move on, so we hit the road Jack. Berlin is somewhere I would love to go to again. I expected it to be a stop gap between two cities that I had higher expectations of but it is a very exiting city with lots of recent history, pain and triumph that was definitely worth including on the trip.
The train from Berlin to Prague was amazing. It was set out with compartments like The Orient Express (my comparable) or The Hogwarts Express (Nat’s comparable - although he was slightly let down by the lack of a magical sweety cart). We had the compartment to ourselves most of the time and from Dresden to Prague the train line followed the path of a river (Elbe flowing into the Vltava I think but my geography may be letting me down).
The rain caught up with us about 20 minutes before we got to Prague so we got a very over priced taxi to the hostel which helped me to get my bearings of the city far more that roaming around on foot could have done.
On the first night we didn’t go far, we explored St Wenceslas Square and had a meal then retired early ready for a day of exploring. Nat fell asleep straight away in our room in the eves on the third floor. It is a very basic hostel with no en suite, lift, wifi or communal area. I had a play about with the Velux blind in our room and wondered what the concrete construction towering above us was. I lay down on the most uncomfortable bed ever which turned out to be a three inch fabric mattress on a sheet of plywood perched over an mdf frame. Then the noise started. I could hear the bell from the front door four floors below, the tram ringing it’s bell at the stop right outside, the Irish girls talking three rooms away and then when I heard the train I realised that the concrete thing was
a railway bridge! Once asleep though I slept soundly - travelling does exhaust you. Breakfast was in a mouldy smelling cellar, I think we have been spoilt by the previous hostels!
We had an early start and joined a walking tour in the old town square. Prague has a far reaching history and while the facts did not hold my attention greatly (much more interested in the recent history of the Nazi occupation and the revolutions than the ancient religious differences and royal struggles) the buildings certainly did. We took around 60 photos in Amsterdam, 80 in Berlin and 150 in Prague, about 140 of which are of buildings or structures. I spent the whole day walking around looking up.
My favourite part wasn’t on the tour but something we stumbled upon ourselves. A sculpture made of keys spelling out the word (from top to bottom) revolution (in Czeck). It was created last year to commemorate the twenty year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution of Czechoslovakia and is the biggest collection of keys in the world. The story behind it is that when the revolutionaries would come to the old town square in the late eighties to protest and
fight for democracy, they would wave their keys in their aloft hands. Every key on the sculpture was given by a Prague citizen last year.
Some of you may have thought it unwise to bring a ten year old to Prague on a weekend, but the dates that we spent in Prague were dictated by the start and end date of the trip. We have seen a couple of stag events in the evening and Nat has found men dressed as babies very entertaining, however there is more going on than that which the typical British tourist expects. Prague is the home of Dvorak and Mozart composed here so we strayed away from the pub trail last night and went to a string quartet performance at Lichtensten Palace which had been recommended to us. In a very intimate room with very few tourists, we enjoyed an hour of familiar pieces by Mozart, Dvorak, Vivaldi. Bizet and Brahms followed by an amazing encore of Plink Plank Plunk by Leroy Anderson, a comedic piece played staccato to the cheers of everyone in the audience.
Nats bit
Americans had the first men on the moon but Dvorak had the first music on
the moon since the Americans played his music in the spaceship as they landed
Back to me
This morning (Sunday) we have left the backpacks at the train station and are having breakfast in a lovely cafe with wifi far far away from the dingy cellar. The plan is to visit the Communist Museum (humorously positioned between the capitalist locations of a Macdonalds and a casino), then join the tour to Prague castle which will take us up to 6pm. In the evening we are taking the “Jazz Boat” along the Vltava because Nat has never heard Jazz and we have a lot of time to kill, then we have reservations on the night train to Vienna.
Now let me tell you about the teeth. Nat has had a wobbly tooth for months (way before his op) and we declared the ‘no betting for money until you are grown up’ rule a home only rule so had a little wager. I bet 5 Euros that it would come out in Italy and Nat countered that it would stay in until the end of the trip. Then a second tooth got wobbly as soon as we started travelling, then
a third and it was the third that came out last night. A child with bleeding gums in a hostel with no ensuite is not fun to manage. We spent the rest of the night discussing whether or not the ‘tooth fairy’ would visit considering no-one concerned believed in her anymore and what currency would be most appreciated if she did make a deposit.
Travelling is very tiring and there have been a few frayed tempers but overall we are having a brilliant time, there is so much going on that I can only give you the highlights. Catch up again in the next country xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0284s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb